Allow us to reintroduce ourselves: Our name is Rec-Room Therapy. Each week, we discuss recent hip-hop tracks. Today, we compile our list of the best guest rappers in the game. What makes a great guest rapper? Well, that depends on who you ask. Generally, it is defined by the propensity to steal, walk away with, and/or kill a song that does belong to you. Some rappers seem to only flourish in the guest role spot, and can never quite extrapolate and recapture the energy of ripping 16 bars on a one-ff. Some rappers make great records, but activate some secret compartment of their brains and go H.A.M. with their guest verses. On this Friday morning, we take a look at both, and everyone in between.

As always, our distinguished panel consists of  Marcus Dowling, Phil R, Jose Lopez-Sanchez of Dead Curious,  Joshua Phelps, and Weird City Fest‘s Aaron Miller and Leah Manners (of Hip Hop Hooray too).

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Danny Brown

Danny Brown is one of the best rappers alive.  You know this. I know this. Your third grade science teacher knows this. We all know this. Under his belt – forever and ever – is last year’s Old, which is the best rap album since XXX. I said it. good kid; m.A.A.d. shots fired.

But as much as I love as those records – and trust me, I do – there’s an energy when he steps on someone else’s track that’s unrivaled in his own discography. There’s a looseness, an unhinged free-form word association, a maniacal Jackson Pollacking. The first time you hear that “CHECK”, you feel a little giddy. You know he’s going to steal the song. You know that shit is fixing to be gone in 60 seconds. The only question is: How is he going to do it today? The versatility is dizzying. My colleague Aaron Miller opined on that earlier this month:

“At this point, I’m struggling to understand how one rapper can so effortlessly shift between styles. Got a throwback track? Put Danny on it. Got a Trapped out banger? Put Danny on it. Got a backpacker joint? You get the point. He is currently tied with Action Bronson for New Raps do-right Feature King. While I prefer the Old Brown, he’s one of the few dudes working right now that I just can’t complain about. Rappers always talk about new shit and then come out sounding like some old shit. Brown reboots rap every time he drops a new track.”

Can you blame the A$AP Mob for not wanting Brown to take their lunch money? It’s like inviting Kevin Durant to play on your intramural squad: You’re gonna win the game, but how good are you gonna look out there next to him?

With that said, here are Brown’s 10 best robberies (as determined by science):

10. A-Trak ft. Juicy J & Danny Brown: “Piss Test”

9. Vampire Weekend ft. Danny Brown, Heems & Despot: “Step (Remix)”

8. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib ft. Danny Brown: “High”

7. Ab-Soul ft. Danny Brown & Jhene Aiko: “Terrorist Threats”

6. The Alchemist ft. Danny Brown & ScHoolboy Q: “Flight Confirmation”

5. Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire ft. Despot, Das Racist, Danny Brown & EL-P:  “The Last Huzzah! (Remix)”

4. Busdriver ft. Aesop Rock & Danny Brown: “Ego Death”

3. A-Trak ft. Donnis, Pill, Danny Brown & CyHi Da Prynce: “Ray Ban Vision (Remix)”

2. El-P ft. Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire & Danny Brown “Oh Hail No”

1. A$AP Rocky ft. Kendrick Lamar ,Joey Bada$$, YelaWolf, Danny Brown, Action Bronson & Big K.R.I.T: “1 Train”

– Phil R

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Nicki Minaj

Rough, nasty, mean, and aggressively sexy, Nicki Minaj isn’t afraid to body every other rapper on tracks.  She doesn’t hold back, and her delivery is often flawless with notable and entertaining vocal manipulations. Here’s your playlist.

– Leah Manners

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R. Kelly

Urinating on teenagers and being accused of being a pedophile unrelated, R. Kelly is one of the greatest creative musical talents of all time. As an R&B vocalist, he’s 21 years into a career in which he’s sold 35 million-plus copies of 12 solo studio albums with nine number-one Billboard singles. However, as a rapper, he could be even greater than he is as a singer.

Foremost, let’s get Trapped In The Closet – the greatest mix of soul and storytelling of all time – out of the way. Though not specifically a “rap” recording, it follows in line with a “rap” tradition that hearkens back to Issac Hayes’ spoken-word storytelling-as-“rapping” on Isaac Hayes’ soulful 1969 version of Johnny Rivers’ 1967 pop ballad “By The Time I Get To Phoenix.” Hayes’ version is exactly 7.2 times longer (and frankly better) than Hayes’ original, which makes R. Kelly’s 33 chapter song-as-story like, 100,000 times more epic than one of the most endearing songs of all time.

R. Kelly’s an emotional singer, which translates to him being a truly epic guest appearing rapper. In 2007, Swizz Beatz’s single “It’s Me Bitches” featuring Jadakiss and Lil Wayne was likely considered huge enough. Weezy was in his “mixtape” era, and considered the hottest (and most enigmatic) emcee in the game. “Al Qaeda Jada” was white hot, too, his post-Lox career going quite well. But, when at 1:07 of the track Weezy ethers his final half of a bar, A CHOIR OF ANGELS welcomes Robert Kelly to the track and well, just listen to this for 64 seconds. It’s as if Kellz has been holding this back since forever, and just breathes fire hotter than anything Dylan ever spit.

Actually, Kelly had been holding back such a lyrical performance for around seven years, as his last notable rap performance was on extended version of his 2000 single “I Wish,” entitled “To The Homies We Lost.” Kelly’s rapping here as a guest on his own track, which seems a bit absurd, but when you break down that this entire song is an ode to his murdered homie Benji makes the rapping feel necessary, as if he *really* wants not us, but Benji himself, to understand where his head is really at. The salt and sweet of Kelly’s hard ass raps with the children’s choir on the hook makes this one one of Kelly’s most hood resonant songs in his discography.

And then there’s the matter of the remix of Bruno Mars’ surprisingly quasi-The Weeknd sex jam “Gorilla.” Oh, you didn’t know that there was an official “G-Mix” remix of the unlikely pop single that featured sex talk from Pharrell and R. Kelly? Well, there is, and its appallingly awesome.

Pharrell keeps the sex-creep “Blurred Lines” vibes going by saying that he’ll “do yoga” with his conquests, stating that “you can be the down dog and I’ll go be the cobra.” Yeahhhh, exactly. Of course, the kicker here is that R.KELLY IS TALKING ABOUT SEX, which, given that his rape charges were being discussed in the Village Voice at roughly the same time this remix was released is, ahem, bold as hell.

R. Kelly blesses this track with a sing-song rap that includes him doing the following:

– comparing himself to “an anaconda in [your] garden”

– saying that he’s “deep down in [your] forest], like…” and then makes stereotypical gorilla noises on the track.

– then, he says that he’s the “king of [your] jungle,” and AGAIN makes the gorilla noises.

– states that “it’s like a rain forest [baby], how I have [your] love pouring down”

– and then he basically says that his sex game is potentially homicidal, and that he’s going to kill a woman’s pussy (yes, the word “pussy” is used) as “[she] beats on [his] chest, bang bang, gorilla.”

Yeah, R. Kelly’s pretty much the best guest rapper in the game. Whether needing something swagged out, soulful, or so overtly sexual that it would make a gonzo porn star’s skin crawl, he OVER-delivers every time.

– Marcus Downling

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Despot

If you’re unfamiliar with Despot, here are the need-to-know details: He looks like a smaller version of Mitchell from “Modern Family” and he’s always angry. Or maybe he’s just agitated. Maybe he’s perpetually fueled by being a “miserable and self loathing” person. The point is: We all know what #MeekMillRapLike, and what #DespotRapLike isn’t that far off. Usually #DespotRapLike you simultaneously stepped on his sneakers and spilled a drink on his Polo and he is absolutely going to punch you in the face but first he wants to shout at you in front of the whole party for twenty minutes. And he is an exceedingly articulate shouter.

The Queens rapper has lived two lives on the national rap landscape. The first came in the front half of the 2000s, when he attracted the attention of El-P, landed on Def Jux Presents III, and proceeded to not make a record. But by the start of this decade, he had fallen in with a rising clique of talented, smart, know-it-all’s coming out of NYC: Das Racist, Mayhem Lauren, Roc Marciano, Action Bronson, Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, Lakutis, and his old friend, the forever hustling El-P. And while Despot wasn’t making his own mixtapes and albums, he was jumping on theirs.

This is a tough crowd to stand out in. It doesn’t help that non-NYC track bandit Danny Brown is part of it either. But even if Despot blew past you on Das Racist’s “Rooftop” (2010) and “Power” (2011) and block party “The Last Huzzah! (Remix)” (2011), he was impossible to ignore come 2012. First came a guest verse on El-P’s “Tougher Cold Killer” (one of four guest verses on all of Cure 4 Cancer), then came last year’s unfuckwithable one-two of “Hood Party” and “Step (Remix)”.  Too boot, he popped up on Blood Orange’s Cupid Deluxe in incredibly WTF turn of events (“Clipped On”).

We still haven’t gotten an album or mixtape out of Despot. And while I unquestionably want one, part of me wonders whether he can translate the density and intensity of his guest verse’s across ten songs or more.  Look at the kicker of his “Hood Party” feature”  “Corn fed damsels forget their manners / Forfeit their class, their folks get embarrassed / Broke heir apparents dropped by their parents / Rent high, allowance low, and she can’t cope / Dad spoke about the woes of the crack smoke / Found his little princess with a fist in her asshole / Found me by her sink washing my dick with the hand soap.” Guh. Filthy on every level, How do you sustain that? How do you top that? I hope we find out.

– Phil R

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Juicy J

Juicy J is experiencing the kind of late career blossoming typically reserved for journeyman basketball players and British stage actors. And while Three 6 Mafia always possessed a rabid fan base willing to go to great lengths to let you know just why the group was underappreciated and how Southern Rap got nothing but undeserved shade from its more illustrious coastal brethren, the collective was never able to reach the sustained commercial success that it deserved. Think of it this way: Juicy J has been putting out lewd, crude, and (more often than not) inspired raps since 1991, and Three 6 Mafia only had two albums go platinum. The group’s worldwide sales total are just a smidge over 5.5 million units – a large number by today’s standards, but just moderate success in the pre-digital distribution era.

For what it’s worth, the Academy Award Winner is seemingly ubiquitous these days. A Juicy J feature is an almost sure-fire way to give a pop song that street cred it needs.  Katy Perry did it on “Dark Horse”. Passion Pit brought on the man from Memphis for a remix of “Constant Conversations” after they jived at SXSW (imagine that get together). Jeremih just wheeled him out to bat cleanup on his latest single.  But really, we can’t disregard the strength of his flow on more traditional hip-hop songs, like Wiz Khalifa’s “My Favorite Song” or Curren$y’s “Three 60”.  Something about being a featured player suits Juicy J a lot better than being the main man.  He gets to come in, exude as much griminess as he likes within his self-contained 30 seconds, and then leave, all joints blazing.  It’s fantastic and delightful, and it takes a cold hearted person not to crack a goofy smile in his wake.

Stay trippy.

– Jose Lopez-Sanchez

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 Andre 3000

It’s been over a decade since Outkast put out a proper rap album – and just to be clear, I’m talking about Stankonia (2000). Andre 3000 checked hip-hop at the door and his partner Big Boi out in the cold with his side of multi-platinum double-album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003).  Instead, 3-Stacks opted for an ambitious, albeit off-key ride through the mind of someone who had truly tired of rap as an art form – or transcended it, depending on your own disposition.

As someone who had been listening to Outkast since Christmas-cum-party cassingle “Player’s Ball” in ‘93, I fully appreciated the group’s ascent into spaced out G-funk from their high school hoe’in and druggin’ and thuggin’ days – ATLiens and Aquemeni were nothing short of revelations and studies in reinvention and growth. But even with the fellas down to Mars and Andre dressing like a baseball catcher for a team from outer space, Big Boi was always there to ground the duo in that old school Atlanta gangster shit. That barber shop shit, that corner shit. If I may paraphrase Avon Barksdale clumsily, I just like gangster music, I suppose, and I wanted my fuckin’ corners. I hated Dre for blowing up the team. I hated people affecting corny dances at the bar when “Hey Ya” or “Roses” came on. I accepted the veritable dirt on the coffin of Outkast as we knew them with the whole “Idlewild” debacle. Outkast – and especially Andre Lauren Benjamin – had been pushing, dissolving, and creating new worlds in hip-hop for a decade, so if their career was over, it’d still be lauded forever as one of the most successful. RIP.

Boy, was I a goddam dummy. You want what you don’t have… If you love something set it free… Absence makes the heart grow fonder. All that shit applies here. Three years after Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, Andre started to creep slowly through the back door into the collective conscious and ramblings of rap fans and critics, popping up on remixes of regional hits like rap lotto winner Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s”. (How the hell did this dude get a fresh Polow Da Don beat and features from both a red hot Jim Jones and the reclusive Andre 3000?) That song charted at the beginning of the summer 2007, almost exactly the moment Dre announced his return as a scene-stealing, track-bodying, lovelorn rap couples counselor on the song of the summer (and for some, the year), UGK’s “Int’l Players Anthem”. Marriage! In a rap! That’s not a Jagged Edge remix! Between these lines and over a smooth Willie Hutch sample from Juicy J and DJ Paul, Dre was giving us the knowledge bombs we needed to survive dire situations. “I apologize if this message gets you down, then I cc’d every girl that I’d see see round town. Hate to see y’all frown, but I’d rather see her smile.” How you gonna hate on that? Dre’s reformed player schtick up against UGKs’ and Big Boi’s big pimpin lifted the track into the Billboard 100, a first for UGK. (Full disclosure: I was on my knees slapping the floor in my tux while the DJ got buck on the dance floor at my friend’s wedding when the bassline hit.) [Editor’s note: I seen it.]

Dre followed it up with a track literally called “I Do” – on a YOUNG JEEZY record, no less. Jay Z, also on the track, once claimed he “can’t leave rap alone, the game needs me.” Well, the first part is true. He should try leaving sometime! He’s creatively petrified at this point. Taking a cue from 3000 wouldn’t be the worst look.

Ever since 2007, Dre’s been in this lane 100 miles per hour, a couple times a year, and he actually sounds like he likes rap again. To wit: Short verses on Frank Ocean’s “Pink Matter”; an insanely bonkers verse on the Rick Ross opus “Sixteen”; and even when lending talent to Rihanna face-smasher Chris Brown’s “Deuces” remix. The less-is-more output of Dre is not what we deserve, but we’re lucky to have it. If he wants to dabble in clothing, film, or other outlets (ambitions for which people have curiously excoriated certain other less charming rap eccentrics, ahem) and drop a diamond in the rough waters of the mixtape era, by all means, please do so, Mr. Benjamin.

I’d apologize for doubting Andre after two plus decades of fandom, but he said it better: “Spaceships don’t come equipped with rearview mirrors, they dip.”

– Joshua Phelps

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Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar is the anti-guest rapper and thus deserves a mention on this list. Lamar’s still “two much for these bitches and three much for these hoes,” and still the Michael Jordan of the rap game. Inviting Kendrick Lamar to spit as a guest on your track at present is akin to feeding Little Mikey Pop Rocks and Coke at the same time. Yes, on some level, Pop Rocks and Coke are both cool and delicious, and thus should be consumed together. However, if you do so, urban legends say that you’re also absolutely certain to die by your own hands.

A$AP Rocky was a really okay rapper to me before “1 Train,” the Lamar-inclusive posse rap cut in which pretty much every other dude on the track NOT named Raheem Myers is incredible (especially the left coast Lamar whose tone stands out most on the largely East coast collective track), and Rocky himself is so average that it could be argued that he’s a completely forgettable addendum to a track in which he’s the featured artist.

Or, there’s Fredo Santana’s 2013 single “Jealous,” where in literally a minute, Lamar co-signs Chicago, talks about how much sex he’s having, gets real about crime, talks about how his money changed his friends, and stunts on fools while using four completely unique flows.

Lamar is sneaky in the sense that he performs to the level of his competition or situation, and oftentimes with an ulterior motive. Check for him on TDE-family singles like Schoolboy Q’s “Collard Greens” and he’s tough. Check for him on Big Sean’s “Control” and he immediately takes the track-as-train off the rails and goes joyriding through the heart of cities, razing suburbs and crashing the whole thing into the ocean, then hopping out the driver’s seat and leaving unscathed. He literally took a guest spot and turned it into his boxing ring, a rap-game Muhammad Ali beating rap-as-Floyd Patterson until the genre acknowledged him by his name, that name being “best rapper alive.” To this day, it’s still one of rap’s most amazing performances…well…ever.

The 2013 BET Cypher was his latest greatest feature moment-as-pulpit, Lamar’s “freestyle” alongside his Top Dawg Entertainment compatriots being a promotional centerpiece of the 2013 awards ceremony. Some highlighted lines to consider when realizing how incredible Lamar is as a guest/feature emcee:

– I hate y’all / I’ll do anything to replace y’all

– I kick ass and then kick knowledge / I’m way more polished than 99 percent of the scholars

– I’m the master that masturbated on your favorite MC

– And nothing’s been the same since they dropped ‘Control’ / And tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes

– I got my thumb on hip-hop and my foot in the back of your ass

– Your career ain’t [shit] unless you got some Kendrick in it

Basically, Kendrick Lamar isn’t a “guest rapper,” he’s a “guest killer,” a king without a crown, and is best to be left to rap alone for the time being, until the industry kowtows to his demands and gives him all of the respect he deserves (and more). As far as guest rappers go, Kendrick may be the king of the game right now.

– Marcus Dowling

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Vince Staples

Vince Staples in a mere 21 years of age. His collective body of work doesn’t stack up to most all of the names on this list. That’s OK. You’d still have to be crazy to not include him here.

Staples had been someone to watch since he guested on Earl‘s “epaR” in 2010, but it was another Earl Sweatshirt song, last summer’s “Hive”, that served as the pool cue over everyone’s head. “Everybody hard until it’s only God they seeing / Kitten soft but in they songs be trapping hard as Jeezy / I don’t believe it,” Staples spits, every one of his 16 bars equally quotable. And, yeah, speaking of disbelief: Did he manage to walk away with one of Earl’s best songs? If Mr. Staples had our curiosity before, now he had our attention.

And in the past year, he’s somehow exceeded our expectations. Even looking past his own work – this year’s excellent Shyne Coldchain Vol. 2 mixtape and the headphone pulverizing single “Blue Suede” – Staples’ features have been uniformly fire. It’s worth noting that he doesn’t do a lot of them. In fact, there have been only four this year, and two of them went to Common. But he makes them count.
I’d go as far as to call his appearance on “Kingdom” the guest verse of the year. Staples greatest gift is his ability to effortlessly zoom from big picture social commentary to snapshots of his childhood, and it’s on full display: “We still wading in the water / Cocaine, blunts, marinating in the water / Leina took a puff and then she gave it to my father / Used to take the bullets out so I could play with the revolver / Satan serenading ever since I was a toddler.”

Watch this space.

– Phil R

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Action Bronson

Action Bronson has come to occupy a certain kind of rarified air over the past year or so, evolving from a novelty rap act to one of the most respected and electrifying MCs on the scene right now.  Yes, he still (occasionally) raps about food, and yes, he still has a weird fixation with Asian ladies, but the delivery is more consistent, the beats more varied and interesting, and the glimpses of a lightning-fast wit show through with more frequency.

As I said a few weeks ago when reviewing his latest single “Easy Rider”, “Bronson is the Salvador Dali of rappers, putting out mildly abstract and clearly acid-washed versions of reality that retain familiarity even as they are expanding the realm of the possible/what should work…” The guest spot actually favors Bronsolino’s brand of “storm on the horizon” delivery, retaining its strength and menace by cleverly adapting to whatever beat he’s working with, without ever exhausting or boring the listener.  While he’s not a true stylistic chameleon like Danny Brown, there are few beats or collaborators that Bam Bam can’t level with: see guest verses on tracks by Domo Genesis, Chance the Rapper, A$AP Rocky, as well as frequent collaborations with Harry Fraud, Party Supplies, and Statik Selektah.   Bam Bam is emerging as a beast of the rap game, and an excellent guest verse choice.

– Jose Lopez-Sanchez

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RZA

RZA is less a rapper than a blurter of words. They hemorrhage from his mouth with a profound lack of grace. And when they words congregate to make a declarative statement, the message can be worthy of the deepest groans. “Turn this square dance into a passion hug.” #neverforget

But what the Abbot lacks in dexterity and poetry, he makes up for with that voice: impossibly viscous, chiseled from granite, and fire hose strong. Sometimes you need a sniper rifle. Sometimes you need a sawed off shotgun. If it’s the latter you need, Robert Diggs is probably your man.

An illustrative anecdote from Complex’s behind the scenes of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy:

“Kanye throws on the instrumental for ‘So Appalled’, which plays on hypnotic repeat for more than an hour while Pusha puts pen to paper finishing his verse. Then RZA walks in the room. And of course he’s got on sunglasses inside. And of course he’s wearing an all-black Ed Hardy-esque ensemble with matching dragon tattoo prints that start on his baseball cap, slither down his T-shirt, and end on his cargo pants. And of course he pulls out a Bobby Digital customized Akai drum machine with the Zorro mask and Wu logo on its face. Because that’s what you do when you’re a motherfucking national treasure. BONG… Kanye asks RZA if he’d voice the hook – ‘Champagne wishes and 30 white bitches/You know the shit is, fuckin’ ridiculous’ – and the Abbott steps into the booth and obliges, immediately transforming from sedate and stoned to amped and aggressive. It’s enough to make us all chuckle on his first take; wrapped around those words, his thick and bizarre drawl just sounds so perfectly…RZA. But Kanye notices something off in the delivery, and he presses the intercom button to talk to RZA: ‘Um, fam, it’s actually ‘thirty white bitches,’ not ‘dirty white bitches.’ RZA laughs. ‘I’ll do it again,’ he says, ‘but to be real, the way I be saying words, you ain’t gon’ be able to tell the difference.'”

And he’s right. With RZA, the words don’t really matter. It’s about texture. It’s about sandpaper upside your face.

– Phil R

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2 Chainz

2 Chainz put out a kinda single called “A-Rod” this year, but if we’re making baseball comparisons, Tity Boi is more like Rap Game Jose Canseco: He may not have the best batting average, but when he connects, the ball travels for days.

2 Chainz doesn’t just have great guest verses. He has Hall of Fame guest verses. They are so profoundly absurd that they transcend time, space, and logic. What do they mean? It doesn’t matter. They get people going.

A roll call of 2 Chainz guest verse hits: “Mercy”, “Beez in the Trap”, “HeadBand”, “R.I.P.” “Rich as Fuck”, “Bandz a Make Her Dance”, “Cut Her Off”… the list goes on.  Do we include “Fuckin Problems” here despite the fact that 2 Chainz sings half the chorus? That’s a good question. I’ll answer with another question: Does 2 Chainz perform it live? Yes. Yes, he does. Yes, it belongs in this list.

With a mind-boggling number of appearances on other people’s hits, there’s another good question: What came first, the 2 Chainz appearance or the hit? That is to say: Is it already a hit when 2 Chainz steps on it or does he bring a certain je ne sais quoi to it? It’s one of life’s great questions. We’ll never know.

And, look, I know that I just said Vince Staples’ “Kingdom” spot is guest verse of the year (it is), but 2 Chainz’s appearance on “24 Hours” is the ying to that yang. It will forever have a place in my heart. 24/7 like a Waffle House.

– Phil R

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1.New Rappers That Kill It Every Time But Get Extra Hype On Other People’s Records:

• Earl Sweatshirt: You guys are keenly aware of my Earl-worship, and basically everything he did before Doris was a guest verse, so there’s that.
• Domo Genesis: This little motherfucker kills it every time. Is he the best rapper under 25 working? Possibly. Is he cooler than 90% of these chumps with a mic? Definitely. Kid has old man boom-bap swag and punchlines for days. See: “Robes” with Gangsta Gibbs and Madlib and that “YNT”  joint with Prodigy.

2. Old Rappers That Kill It Most of the Time But Really Kill It On Other People’s Records:

• Busta Rhymes: There is a reason that you think every Busta feature is actually his song. He eats up guest verses like nobody’s biz.
• Eminem: NO ONE HAS EVER BODIED A GUEST VERSE LIKE “RENEGADE” AND NO ONE EVER WILL. Seriously, that track is like Buzz Aldrin landing on the Moon and some dude is already up there like “What?”

3.One Off Standouts from Rappers That Have Fallen Off That Have Some of the Best Verses of All Time:

• Foxy Brown: Mostly always solid in her prime, but the drug-math verse from The Firm’s “Affirmative Action” is fucking bananas.
• Krumbsnatcha: Nobody knows who he is except Gang Starr fans and his verse at the end of ” Make ’em Pay” stands out as my favorite guest of all time. Not even playing. Read it. Every word. I just punched the wall thinking about it.

4.Rappers I Hate But Go Hard on Other People’s Records:

• There is only one person in this category and that is Kanye. I hate him so much. Sold his soul to the Illuminati Devils and chose Rap Elvis as his righteous path in life. But… the Jay Z tracks. The Consequence tracks. The Twista tracks. The Kweli “Get By” remix with Hov and Mos Def AND Busta Rhymes(see #2)?!?! Get the fuck outta here. “It’s like Michaelangelo painted a picture of Maya Angelou.” Shut it down. If he could have just shut his crazy mouth unless in the booth during the last decade he would be right up there with the double-duty producer Kings like Diamond D, Madlib, Dilla, Qtip etc. Now all he does is embarrass us with stank trap shit, exponentially increasing wackness, and strained fashion tips. #HOLLER

– Aaron Miller